#226: Staph Infection in BJJ, Design Your Own Gi Contest

The staph infection in Rick’s knee made his knee swell enormously in just 8 hours. Photo courtesy Rick.

The FightWorks Podcast has two stories for you this time around, Family! Our first is the unfortunate but educational experience of a Brazilian jiu-jitsu training partner and friend of our humble BJJ radio show named Rick, who contracted a staph infection while training BJJ. In a matter of hours after the staph infection began kicking in, Rick’s knee swelled several times larger than its original size. While it did not turn out to be a MRSA variety of staph, it was indeed a dangerous infection.

Shortly thereafter Rick’s knee was operated on as the antibiotic wasn’t working fast enough to reduce the swelling that was happening. The surgeons excavated the infection and left what is called a wound vac to his knee, which is a battery powered device that Rick wears on his hip and continually works to slowly suck out the new discharge produced by the infection.

Thankfully, Rick is going to be fine and will be able to train jiu-jitsu again in the future. But it is a cautionary tale and reminds us to take skin infections very seriously, as they are not uncommon in jiu-jitsu.

His knee was operated on to reduce swelling caused by the infection. Photo courtesy Rick.

A closer view of the surgery site and the wound vac. Photo courtesy Rick.

Some of the designs in the Design Your Own Crazy Ass Gi Contest.

Our second story is brought to us by Seymour Yang of Meerkatsu.com. Seymour lead the charge by some BJJ bloggers in a novel experiment where folks could dream up any design to be put on a gi. They quickly found a sponsor in Tatami Fightwear, who offered to actually manufacture the winning gi design. So Seymour will tell us all about the contest, its reach around the world, and some of the wild entries they received.